Animated Film and Disability

Slava Greenberg

Description

While many live-action films portray disability as a spectacle, "crip animation" (a genre of animated films that celebrates disabled people's lived experiences) uses a variety of techniques like clay animation, puppets, pixilation, and computer-generated animation to represent the inner worlds of people with disabilities. Crip animation has the potential to challenge the ableist gaze and immerse viewers in an alternative bodily experience.

In Animated Film and Disability, Slava Greenberg analyzes over 30 animated works about disabilities, including Rocks in My Pockets, An Eyeful of Sound, and A Shift in Perception. He considers the ableism of live-action cinematography, the involvement of filmmakers with disabilities in the production process, and the evocation of the spectators' senses of sight and hearing, consequently subverting traditional spectatorship and listenership hierarchies. In addition, Greenberg explores physical and sensory accessibility in theaters and suggests new ways to accommodate cinematic screenings.

Offering an introduction to disability studies and crip theory for film, media, and animation scholars, Animated Film and Disability demonstrates that crip animation has the power to breach the spectator's comfort, evoking awareness of their own bodies and, in certain cases, their social privileges.

PREFACE: CALL ME TRANS-CRIP
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
INTRODUCTION: ANIMATION, DISABILITY, AND SPECTATORSHIP
1. RESISTING THE ABLEIST GAZE: BETWEEN MAINTREAM AND EXPERIMENTAL FORMS
2. EMBODYING SPECTATORSHIP: INTERSUBJECTIVE WAYS OF BEING-IN-THE-WORLD
3. BLINDING THE SPECTATOR: NON-VISION-CENTRIC PLEASURES
4. DEAFENING THE SPECTATOR: RETHINKING SONIC PLEASURES AND AUDISM
5. TOWARD ACCESSIBLE SPECTATORSHIPS
BIBLIOGRAPHY
FILMOGRAPHY
INDEX

Sujets

• People with Disabilities
• Genres
• Social Science
• Sociologie, société et politique
• Buscando a Nemo
• Película fotográfica
• Finding Nemo
• History of film
• Inside Out
• Le Monde de Nemo
• Film

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 07 février 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780253064523
• Langue: English

Extrait

ANIMATED FILM AND DISABILITY
ANIMATED FILM AND DISABILITY
Cripping Spectatorship

SLAVA GREENBERG
INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS
This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press
Office of Scholarly Publishing
Herman B Wells Library 350
1320 East 10th Street
Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA
iupress.org
2022 by Slava Greenberg
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America
First printing 2022
Cataloging is available from the Library of Congress.
ISBN 978-0-253-06449-3 (hardback)
ISBN 978-0-253-06450-9 (paperback)
ISBN 978-0-253-06451-6 (e-book)
Elizabeth Swados, My Depression: The Up and Down and Up of It 2014
CONTENTS
Preface: Call Me Trans Crip
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Animation, Disability, and Spectatorship
1. Resisting the Ableist Gaze: Between Mainstream and Experimental Forms
2. Embodying Spectatorship: Intersubjective Ways of Being-in-the-World
3. Blinding the Spectator: Non-Vision-Centric Pleasures
4. Deafening the Spectator: Rethinking Sonic Pleasures and Audism
5. Toward Accessible Spectatorships
Bibliography
Filmography
Index
PREFACE: CALL ME TRANS CRIP
[TW: Please note that this text contains a mention of a suicide attempt and discussion of psychiatric violence. Discretion is advised.]
WHEN I WAS IN HIGH school, one of my closest friends was coping with depression and swallowed some pills. After getting her stomach pumped at the ER, she accepted being voluntary committed to a psychiatric hospital. This commitment turned from voluntary to involuntary, and it took her longer than expected to get out. During her time there, she was forced to endure humiliating and dehumanizing practices-policing of nonheteronormative desires, solitary confinement as punishment for disobedience, prevention of visitations, and more. Seeking an external perspective, as well as a desire to share what was going on behind closed doors with the rest of the world, she asked me to make a film about the violence of institutionalization. 1
I pretended to be her cousin-as visitations were only granted to family members-and came to visit with a camcorder hidden in my backpack. While we were sitting alone on her hospital bed, with the door closed, she asked me to document our conversation. I had been warned by people in white robes not to take any photos and was scared of getting caught. My unrealistic fear was that the punishment would be getting locked up there too. I ended up making a short film out of a single late-night conversation we had during one of her visits home. It was a grainy, green, night vision sequence juxtaposed with digitally manipulated breaking glass objects in slow motion or played in rewind. At her request, it was never publicly screened. This was the moment where I first discovered my desire to find nonindexical, realist, or objective ways of showing and telling without taking the privilege of visibility for granted.
At the same time and on a different level, the panic I experienced in that hospital was not quite tangible to me at the time and lingered on for years. I had already been diagnosed with ADHD and dyscalculia and experienced anxiety, and it could also be the gender dysphoria I did not have the language to articulate, but the irrational fear of being omitted seems more generational or communal rather than my own trauma.
Fifteen years later, I found myself at a psychiatrist s hospital office, being interrogated as part of my gender-affirmation process, or rather attempting to get my insurance to pay for top surgery. I had contacted the Gender Reassignment Committee at Tel Hashomer Sheba Medical Center to seek funding for my top surgery. After a phone conversation with the committee s secretary, I received a letter stating: 1. The above-mentioned patient has been/is under diagnosis in the psychiatric clinic at Tel Hashomer Sheba Hospital. 2. He/she has been diagnosed as suffering from the following diagnosis according to ICD-10 [International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems]: F-64. This code stands for gender identity disorder, a condition removed from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual ( DSM ) in 2013. 2 At my meeting with the psychiatrist, I was mostly preoccupied with the diagnostic process-how did my mere self-identification as trans classified me as having a personality and behavior disorder? Not only was I diagnosed over the phone, but it was based on an outdated version of the DSM because it had already been renamed gender dysphoria in DSM-V . After this encounter, I began thinking about the necessity of coalitions between the trans and disability rights movements. The trans community could greatly benefit from learning more about the significant knowledge and experience the Mad Pride movement had already gained over years of activism. After all, we face similar histories and presents of stigmatization. We depend on the same oppressive psychiatric diagnostic process to be able to access treatment, often being gaslighted in the process, while also taking the risk of being marginalized or becoming outcast by that same psychiatric label.
However, I believe it is not only the Mad Pride movement that trans advocates need to pay attention to but also the overall disability rights movement. One specific case might illustrate what I mean here. Some five years ago, two colleagues of mine managed to get gender-neutral restrooms approved in their buildings on campus. Using this precedent, I then wrote the dean with the same request for the building I worked in. Shortly after, a new sign appeared on the door of the only accessible single-stall restroom in the building: the feminine and masculine figures, next to a figure in a wheelchair.
At the time, the sign seemed revolutionary to me, like the symbol for crip, trans, gender-nonconforming solidarity; here we were, trans, gender- nonconforming people and people with disabilities occupying the same space. Enthusiastic about the new sign, I took a selfie with it and posted it on my social media account. However, I did not even consider the possible consequences. A filmmaker with a disability, commented on the photo: I cannot believe YOU of all people would do that. For her, I should have known better than to turn the only accessible stall in the building into an even busier one. During our conversation, I was angry about the exclusion from the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) that would have made clear the similar needs of our communities in access to restrooms as well as other accommodations. I was dreaming of a future where all stalls are accessible and gender-neutral and she was thinking of the worsening of conditions in the present. I was not able to change her mind because the accessible restroom is still a relatively fresh victory and there is no guarantee it will be permanent. However, another reason for her justified anger is that our struggles have been segregated for so long, and we have internalized that when public spaces accommodate our needs, it is not a rule but rather an exception and thus something fragile that may be easily taken away and cannot be shared. A recent visit to a Palm Springs restaurant s restroom shed a new light on a surprising mutual necessity for an accessible stall. As I approached the bathrooms, I saw two doors; the one right in front of me had a brown rectangle sign with only the word MEN in white bold letters, and the one on the left had a brown triangle with a masculine symbol, and the disability symbol on top, and a the word MEN below. I was in a hurry to go in and only noticed that there was an accessible bathroom on the left and walked into the one right in front of me. When I opened the door and found a rather large stall with a single urinal and a sink, I had no choice but to use what was apparently the wheelchair- and transaccessible men s stall.
In her thought-provoking Feminist Queer Crip , Alison Kafer uses the toilet as both a physical space and a potential political meeting point between disability and trans research and activism: Recognizing bathroom access as a site for coalition building can potentially move us beyond the physical space of bathrooms, turning our critical attention to acts of elimination that occur beyond the socially sanctioned space of the toilet, public or private. However, trans people were explicitly excluded from coverage under the ADA. This is despite the potential for coalitions and solidarities between trans people and people with disabilities and despite the fact that gender dysphoria is still classified in the latest DSM 5 Revisions of March 2022. Thus, attending to the space of the toilet not only makes room for coalitions between trans and disability concerns, it continues the crip theory move of keeping the meanings and parameters of disability, access. 3 The toilet is an example of a political sphere binding the body to space and forcing a shift in perception.
The year Kafer published these words, gender identity disorder was finally removed from the DSM . At the same time, debates about bathroom use became a bone of public contention between US Democrats and Republicans. Approaching the terrain of disability studies without marking that closeness, 4 Jack Halberstam also refers to the bathroom debate. He describes it as part of the denial of trans* access to public facilities and, in a way, reads the addition of gender dysphoria to DSM-V as part of the social model of disability. 5 He writes: As with past definitions of